1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an improvement over a control mechanism and display for a hybrid vehicle having a motor driving means enabling a running of the vehicle through an output of an electrical motor, and an engine driving means enabling a running of the vehicle through an output of an engine. The invention includes a throttle sensor for sensing an opening degree of a throttle valve of the engine, a driving change-over control means having a mode map for determining each of working regions of the motor driving means and the engine driving means in response to a sensing signal of the throttle sensor, and a display device for informing a driver that the motor driving means is being operated in the critical region Ma, and for displaying a battery residual amount.
2. Description of Background Art
Such a control mechanism for a hybrid-type vehicle as described above has already been known in the art as disclosed, for example, in JP-A No. 320364/2000.
The prior art control mechanism for a hybrid-type vehicle as above shows that a driving operation for positively holding an operating state of the motor driving means to continue a motor running mode because when a specified condition is set during operation of the motor driving means, i.e. during the motor running mode, the operation is changed over automatically to an operation of the engine driving means without any notice and becomes an engine running mode.
Further, it is desired in the electric vehicle running under a driving force of a motor, or a hybrid-type vehicle having an engine associated with the motor (hereinafter totally expressed as an electric vehicle) that there is provided a configuration capable of accurately acknowledging its status because its distance that it can run is dependent on a charging residual amount of the battery. In view of this fact, Japanese Patent Document JP-A No. 46587/2000 a technology in which both an electrical power supplied from the battery to the running motor and consumption electrical power of the motor are displayed at a display panel at a driver's seat with a practical numerical value.
A more certain care is needed against the status of a battery during its discharging operation than during its charging operation. However, the aforesaid prior art needed to judge it by deciding whether or not the battery is kept in its charged status or in its discharged status that a code of “minus (−)” is applied in front of a numerical value displayed at the display panel or not. Due to this fact, there occurs a possibility that a riding person hardly acknowledges a status of the battery unless the riding person stares at the displayed value.
In addition, it is not necessary to pay a special attention to the status of a battery if the battery has a sufficient residual amount of charge even in the state that the battery is being discharged. However, there occurs a possibility that the riding person is always forced to monitor the battery because the consumption power or the like of the motor in the prior art described above is always continued to be displayed without having any relation with the residual charging amount of the battery.
Further, when the charging or discharging status of the battery was tried to be displayed practically through its numerical value as found in the prior art, a circuit for detecting quantitatively an electrical power supplied from the battery to the running motor and the consumption power of the running motor and a display unit for converting the result of detection into a practical numerical value data and displaying it was needed, resulting in that they had a technical problem that the number of component parts was increased or a size of the device was increased, they reflected to increase its price and this device became expensive.